Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

Actually, it's a fascist political organization masquerading as a criminal racket masquerading as a cult masquerading as a religion hiding behind about 150 front groups. See the talk given by lawyer Graham Berry at a conference in Germany held to investigate them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvMoSsuRVW8 [youtube.com]

The perjury issue with the DMCA is something that confuses a lot of people, obviously including yourself. There are two cases where perjury is cited in the DMCA. First, a person must be authorized to work on behalf of the owner of the infringed property:

(A) To be effective under this subsection, a notification of claimed infringement must be a written communication provided to the designated agent of a service provider that includes substantially the following:.... (vi) A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

Note here that they sign that the information is accurate, but not under penalty of perjury. The perjury statement follows the 'and' and only refers to authorized representation.

On the other hand, if you claim that the material was uninfringing, you have to sign under penalty of perjury that your information is accurate:

(C) A statement under penalty of perjury that the subscriber has a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.

This double standard isn't by accident. The record and movie companies knew what they were doing when they were writing this act up for Congress.

The perjury statement for the take-down notice requires a statement "that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed". As I read it, that requires that the notice contain some other allegation that an exclusive right is infringed, and that the work and the exclusive right be identified accurately. If the notice does not accurately identify a work (and right) that the complainer is authorized to act on, the complainer might have answer for perjury.

Reading the (reasonable) YouTube rules for countering a takedown, a possible motive arises.

The material taken down is blatantly non-infringing. Any actual takedown attempt, for takedown sake, would just be minor harassment.

However... the act of countering a takedown ultimately requires that the video's poster actually identify themselves, for the purpose of further legal discussion/action. Any anonymity is lost at that point.

Well, someone has to issue the DMCA notice - somebody is in charge somewhere. I know it may not seem like it some time, but someone will become accountable if you prod hard enough.

In fact, if they are careful, all those users who had their material taken down could cause so much trouble for Scientology they may never send another DMCA again. I mean, these video posters are dedicated enough to submit anti-Scientology videos, I'm sure if they have enough time and energy for this sort of thing they'll have enough time and energy to fight back!

You've not seen what the Church of $cientology can do in a court room lately, have you?
They have so many judges in their pockets that they are able to do crap like this and never see the inside of a court room.

In most other cases, something might happen. Unfortunately, the CoS is an insanely influential group that has gotten members into some of the deepest parts of out legal system and government. They have a tendency to work the system from within and they do it well. Its part of what makes them so scary. That and the amount of money that they have would tie things up in court for so long that the people bringing them their would go bankrupt before too long. They'll also be harassed at every corner of their life by the CoS too.

'Terrorist group' is a registered trademark. Religious Technology Center who owns this trademark and other trademarks and service marks of Scientology licenses these marks only for use by the Church of Scientology.

No, it isn't, and it never will be. Arrest people for unlawful acts where the evidence merits it, sure, but you do not fuck with freedom of religion and freedom of assembly. Not even for Scientologists. Congratulations, you just sunk to their level.

I agree - the US government does intervene on pyramid schemes masquerading as religions as well as groups that brainwash members, both of which are illegal. They also sometimes intervene on groups that they consider dangerous without proof of illegal activity, which I believe the Branch Davidians (Waco) fell into.

Not to Godwin the discussion, but this is exactly what is at issue when you deal with the Neo-Nazi movement in the US. The march they wanted to have in the town that is the highest per capita jewish population in the US. I would have liked to have seen that case reach the Supreme Court. The town refused to issue them a permit to march, which is unconstitutional, you can require registration, but they MUST issue on request.

Unfortunately, Chicago convinced them that marching there was more of an impact.

Anyhow, I definitely fall on the side of defending the right of people to say things that I wholeheartedly disagree with, since it means that the things that I say will never be the ones on the edge.

They also sometimes intervene on groups that they consider dangerous without proof of illegal activity, which I believe the Branch Davidians (Waco) fell into.

You mean that horrible debacle where 76 lives were lost in house fire while the govenment officials who started it watched it burn? Great example.

BTW- I know Koresh was a cultist and he had the typical cultist agenda: sex with anyone at anytime. I understand the stickiness of the issue of saving people from their own stupidity, but killing the abused to stop potential future danger is wrong, and will always be wrong.

I'd like to think the U.S. is a stronger democracy than that, but I dunno as I'm an Aussie.

I'd like to think we were a stronger democracy than this too.

But I gotta believe my eyes. We The People are allowed to play our little game of self rule so long as we don't get in the way of Big Oil, Big Pharma, the Telco Gang, and the *IAAs, and so on. Which leaves us precious little to play with.

"Principle" and "sorry" are the two most expensive words in the law. Arguably, in that order. That said, 4,000 videos may mean enough plaintiffs for a class action, which could have some hope of compensating a lawyer for fighting this on principle whereas the 4,000 individuals couldn't afford it on an individual basis. The EFF has also filed lawsuits over DMCA abuses in the past, so at least be sure that someone over there has a way to get in touch with the people adversely affected by this one.

So start an organization that will fight on behalf of a group of people, funded by contributions from those people. The financial burden is too much for one person, so split it among thousands of people.

I'm still surprised this isn't happening more often. The internet is the perfect tool to organize something like this, spread the word and secure donations. So short of a few big organizations like the ACLU, why isn't it happening?

Yeah, there should be an organization, a foundation if you will, that will help us with the battles on this new electronic frontier.

Everyone who had a video taken down because of this needs to form a class-action suit and counter immediately. You can't have a video taken down in this manner without it (a) violating many nation's free-speech laws; and (b) violating perjury laws. Hit 'em where it hurts.

I assume you would have to file charges at a police station in their local area. Then, you'd probably have to get the DA there to actually press the case. Finally, you'd have to have a judge willing to apply pretty harsh sentencing.

It might actually be fun to have 400+ people roll up in Podunk Police Station and all file criminal reports against these people.

It would also probably be a good idea to send a letter to their local BAR association and advise then that their people are perjuring themselves while slandering innocent people.

I would wager that Scientology sees this as a win-win situation. Either the videos come down without reprisals, or the video creators have to file charges/suits using their real names, opening them up to being 'fair gamed'. What I wouldn't give to see them caught downloading Schindler's List or something - they and the MPAA deserve each other.

We can only hope they use Thunderdome rules. Two men enter, one man leaves!

I would wager that Scientology sees this as a win-win situation. Either the videos come down without reprisals, or the video creators have to file charges/suits using their real names, opening them up to being 'fair gamed'.

Bingo. This actually started a week ago courtesy of porn baron/Scientologist Oliver Schaper. At the time, the possibility of DMCA counter-claim was mooted among Anonymous, and shot down due to this exact reason. Scientology monitors Anonymous message boards, and for this reason, some of us think that they came to the conclusion that they had the green light to do this.

What Scientology didn't gamble on was the fact that there are some Anonymous whose identities are already known and who were willing to take action. I was one of them.

I delved back into my Slashdot experiences for this purpose and used the old sysop trick for catching spammers: set up a honeypot. I created a YouTube account and uploaded certain videos which seemed to have a good chance of getting taken down for specious reasons. Sure enough, one of them was. Within thirty minutes, I filed a counter-claim.

We can only hope they use Thunderdome rules. Two men enter, one man leaves!

There is a very good reason why we in Chanology call our out-of-control playpen at Enturbulation.org the Thunderdome...

That is a damned good question. A quick search on Google will show that we've been here before. www.xenu.net Had no end of trouble with this. I think that if they attempt to link all anonymous videos as being from one source it will be MORE than interesting.

FTFA:

YouTube users responded with DMCA counter-notices. At this time, many of the suspended channels have been reinstated and many of the videos are back up. Whether or not American Rights Counsel, LLC represents the notoriously litigious Church of Scientology is unclear, but this would not be the first time that the Church of Scientology has used the DMCA to silence Scientology critics. The Church of Scientology DMCA complaints shut down the YouTube channel of critic Mark Bunker in June, 2008. Bunkerâ(TM)s account, XenuTV, was also among the channels shut down in this latest flurry of takedown notices.

It sounds like Google did what is required of them by law, becoming just the bullets used by both sides to fire at each other in a war that I hope ends up in court. Flagrant misuse of DMCA takedown notices should be punished. CoS is proving once again just exactly why it is they deserve legal status as a church. You know, one of those organizations of compassion and love. hmmmm, then again Tammy Fae Baker wasn't too happy with some of the public comments about her either.

It's kind of a shame there is no particular way to make CoS leaders 'fair game' though I'd like to see someone find a way in court to fair game them there.

The head of the Galactic Federation (76 planets around larger stars visible from here) (founded 95,000,000 years ago, very space opera) solved overpopulation (250 billion or so per planet, 178 billion on average) by mass implanting. He caused people to be brought to Teegeeack (Earth) and put an H-Bomb on the principal volcanos (Incident II) and then the Pacific area ones were taken in boxes to Hawaii and the Atlantic area ones to Las Palmas and there "packaged".

His name was Xenu. He used renegades. Various misleading data by means of circuits etc. was placed in the implants.

When through with his crime loyal officers (to the people) captured him after six years of battle and put him in an electronic mountain trap where he still is. "They" are gone. The place (Confederation) has since been a desert. The length and brutality of it all was such that this Confederation never recovered. The implant is calculated to kill (by pneumonia etc) anyone who attempts to solve it. This liability has been dispensed with by my tech development.

One can freewheel through the implant and die unless it is approached as precisely outlined. The "freewheel" (auto-running on and on) lasts too long, denies sleep etc and one dies. So be careful to do only Incidents I and II as given and not plow around and fail to complete one thetan at a time.

In December 1967 I knew someone had to take the plunge. I did and emerged very knocked out, but alive. Probably the only one ever to do so in 75,000,000 years. I have all the data now, but only that given here is needful.

One's body is a mass of individual thetans stuck to oneself or to the body.

One has to clean them off by running incident II and Incident I. It is a long job, requiring care, patience and good auditing. You are running beings. They respond like any preclear. Some large, some small.

Sure they are, but they can always claim they were operating in "good faith".

However, the "consequences" are unfortunately quite obvious:

By sending arguably baseless DMCA takedown notifications to thousands of Anti-Scientology videos on Youtube, they just have to wait for the DMCA counter- notices to be filed.

The counter-notices contain personal information for all those otherwise pesky anonymous internet users and get forwarded to them for free. Thats a lot cheaper than trying to hire people to track down your enemies on the internet.

And as an added bonus some fraction of the content - filed by folks whom are not aware of the counter-notice procedure, or whom are unwilling to divulge their personal information to the Church of Scientology - just goes away.

Finally, the counter-notice is a testimony that they can try to get the person to perjure themselves on that the content doesn't belong to the Church of Scientology, which gives them even more ammunition, given that a fair chunk of the content out there really does consist of Scientology documents.

However, YouTube is required by law to heed these takedown notices, no matter whether they're justified or not; it's up to the videos' submitters now to file counternotices (at which point YouTube will be required by law to heed these counternotices and reinstate those videos, no matter whether they're justified or not). At that point, it becomes a matter for the courts.

The whole point of this part of the DMCA is to allow places like YouTube to stay out of judging content altogether and simply have a simple algorithm to follow mechanically that will shield them from legal responsibility. Whether the mechanism is really good or whether it's flawed is another question; but for a site like YouTube that mostly cares about not getting involved in proxy fights over copyright, it's a blessing.

So it's not really a fine line for YouTube to walk. They just do what they are legally required to, and anyone who doesn't like that and complains about YouTube is barking up the wrong tree - they should work to get the law changed instead.

So it's not really a fine line for YouTube to walk. They just do what they are legally required to, and anyone who doesn't like that and complains about YouTube is barking up the wrong tree - they should work to get the law changed instead.

I, for one, wouldn't want to see the law changed so that it would make ISPs like YouTube more responsible for copyright infringment than they are now. The only changes that might make the law more palatable would be penalities for abuse of the process as others have already mentioned. Applying the perjury standard in an even-handed way would be a good start.

I agree with you that the way issue gets framed here on Slashdot often makes it sound like YouTube or other ISPs are somehow intentionally stepping on the rights of uploaders. There are lots of things to dislike about the DMCA, but the take-down provisions are not high on my list. I've seen people complain here that their material was removed and act like they have no recourse. Not only do you have recourse, you don't even really need an attorney to protest a take-down notice.

I've seen people complain here that their material was removed and act like they have no recourse. Not only do you have recourse, you don't even really need an attorney to protest a take-down notice.

You don't need one, but in fact, you'd better have one. Sending a DMCA counter-notification is the equivalent of telling an Old West (movie version) gunfighter that you'll meet him on the main street at high noon. You have to swear under penalty of perjury (and this one counts, unlike the one in the takedown) that the material is non-infringing, and you have to specify a court which you agree to be sued in. Do you really want to say "go ahead, assholes, sue me" to a bunch of lawyers without a lawyer of your own?

One would think YouTube would know by now. They do have to walk a fine line, since they need to keep the content owners happy in order to continue operating, but since when is a religion protected content? I'd love to see someone file a countersuit.

I'm not sure of the details, but the church of scientology holds copyrights and trademarks on all its "works." It does this to prevent unauthorized usage of them. Its content is no more or less protected than that of an individual or corporation.

Scientology might own the copyright to their works, but the Dutch [spaink.net] supreme court ruled [blogspot.com] that copyright infringement can be acceptable if it is of interest of the general public. Of course, they have no jurisdiction in the US, but if the copyrighted material can be hosted in the Netherlands, it can be made accesible to anyone.

Scientology might own the copyright to their works, but the Dutch supreme court ruled that copyright infringement can be acceptable if it is of interest of the general public. Of course, they have no jurisdiction in the US, but if the copyrighted material can be hosted in the Netherlands, it can be made accesible to anyone.

I don't know a thing about Dutch law, but in US law the first of 4 possible factors which determine if fair use applies is:

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

Note that this doesn't invalidate the notice. Fair use in the USA is an affirmative defence. It doesn't say that copyright infringement hasn't taken place, it says that infringement has taken place but that society has decided to permit this specific case. This rather nasty bit of law means that you can file a DMCA notice against something which falls under fair use without committing perjury, but when you receive a counter notice and then take the original recipient to court you will probably lose.

Not to mention satire, no matter how poor taste it may be - is protected. That gives us the right to mock Xenu and Scientology as much as we want - or heck, why stop there? How about that white Jesus shown in every church I've ever been to? I imagine the dude looked a lot more like Osama bin Laden than any white guy. I think the conversation with Bush would be hilarious -

Jesus: I am not a terrorist!Bush: with a name like Jesus bin Nazareth, you are obviously a terrorist. All you 'bin' guys are terrorists.Jesus: bin means 'from' you idiot!Bush: tell that to Allah you turbanheadJesus: but I'm Christian you moron!Bush: you guys would say anything - I am the DECIDER, and I decide you go to Guantanamo bay - take him away boys!(feds drag Jesus off)

Wasn't there a recent court decision [wired.com] that stated that an entity that submits a DMCA takedown notice must make a reasonable effort to determine whether the allegedly infringing work is non-infringing under the fair-use doctrine? This hasn't been through an appeals process yet, so the ruling may not stand, but it could have interesting effects on the CoS situation.

I'm not sure of the details, but the church of scientology holds copyrights and trademarks on all its "works." It does this to prevent unauthorized usage of them. Its content is no more or less protected than that of an individual or corporation.

No, you aren't aware of the details. In none of the four thousand instances was material from the Church of Scientology (technically, the Church of Spiritual Technology, their front corporation that's set up to hold all their copyrights for them) used in any video.

And CST was NOT the claimant. They used at least five different false claimants to have the videos taken down. When YouTube found out through the counter-claims and various other complaints that these claimants didn't exist, YouTube put the videos back up. Unfortunately, that took as much as sixteen hours from the time of the original takedown.

If that's true, then it would seem the perjury bit actually has merit...

I wonder if we can talk anyone into going after the claimants?

You would have to find them first. Whoever did this, whether it was Oliver Schaper or Scientology's Office of Special Affairs, used sockpuppet companies that don't exist (seriously, when this started, we checked, first using Google and then using state corporate record databases). How do you sue someeone who doesn't exist?

I don't want to get sued, so this post DOESN'T talk about L. Ron Hubbard.

It'll talk about Ronald L. Oldmother

I don't want to get sued, so this post DOESN'T talk about thetans or Xenu.

I'll be talking about tarpnars and Gornak, respectively.

Now, bobians have a theological reason to believe they're above the law in a democratic republic. According to Ronald L. Oldmother's writings, both voters and elected officials would be filled with the souls of dead aliens murdered by Gornak.

These "body tarpnars" cause irrationality because of the huge 3d movie theatre where I assume the tarpnars were forced to watch the Spice Girls movie for millions of years until they thought it was a good movie.

This means that the Bobians don't need to follow the law, because they're the chosen, those who don't have "body tarpnars" affecting their judgement. Any lawmakers that get in the way are only doing so because of their "body tarpnars".

I'll leave it as an excercise for the reader to wonder why they don't have to follow the law when they don't want to, but why they still use the law when it says things they like anyway.

Yes, DMCA takedown notices are supposedly sworn, under penalty of perjury, to be from a person/organisation with a good claim to owning the copyright.

Where this gets tricky is proving they were used to quash criticism and not in good faith. IE if they say "we thought we owned it and had a good claim", that may be enough to get them out of it. Depending on how blatant they were, of course.

The videos likely have references to copyrighted materials, perhaps even direct readings from them, in which case they own that material and as such have a valid claim of copyright to that particular material, not the whole video. However, the video would have to be pulled until that is determined or the offending part removed.

Yes, except:

1) The Church of Scientology, and more specifically their copyright holding company the Church of Spiritual Technology, was not the claimant(s).

2) Some videos were specifically reworked by the creators to eliminate any and all possible claims of copyright, including getting rid of the music. Those videos were still taken down, some of them within ten minutes of being uploaded.

By abusing the DMCA they can get slapped pretty heavy. Especially in light of the latest ruling that copyright owners must explicitly consider whether a suspected violation is fair use. Certainly if any of the folks that got harassed decide to litigate back they may well have a decent case.

Youtube is a commercial company operating in what is becoming a more and more competitive environment, there are a huge number of video hosting sites, a lot of them operating outside of the US. In this case should youtube prove that it actually really does endeavour to adhere to the law by pursuing CoS for vindictively targeting them, when similar DMCA notices were not handed out to every other video hosting sites containing the same videos.

This unfairly targets youtube and damages their business as well as causing them significant cost in evaluating each of the DMCA notices, notifying users of the claimed infringement, altering the content of the hosting services, evaluating the counter notices and then having to reinstate the content, whilst the competitors suffered no comparable harm. The Corporation of Scientology seems to love picking on youtube and this peculiar focus is really starting to make it appear like the are some anti free speech, privacy invasive, scientologists insurgents skulking amongst the googlites, the cult of google might unfortunately be less of a joke than it should be.

Yeah, but who is going to do the slapping? There won't be proper plaintiffs ready to do battle over youtube videos, unless someone somehow gets them together to form a class-action lawsuit. Unlikely.

Yes, and that is PRECISELY why the DMCA is a bad, bad idea, has always been a bad, bad idea, and will always be a bad, bad idea. Of course, it's a paid-for bad, bad idea, so the politicians are happy.

It's also somewhat interesting that the youtube venue provides no opportunity for the exercise of DMCA counter-notices,

Where did you read that ?

It does.

which are an important part of the law. Perhaps it's time to move controversial videos to a site that will have a bit more of a backbone and not allow the powerful to walk all over those who don't even get the rights they're entitled to by law. (I wonder if youtube has any criteria at all for evaluating the validity of these notices before it complies.)

That's the kicker of the DMCA. YouTube is not SUPPOSED to check anything beyond the formal specifications. They are not lawyers. They do not give legal advice. It is not their content. They should not be the ones determining whether something is ok or not -- and indeed they really can't.

On the other hand, unscrupulous web hosts (such as NetSol, for one) have and will continue to ignore their legal obligation to maintain service after proper counter-notice is given

They have no such obligation. They can simply terminate your account or take one-sided "administrative" measures. Since your NetSol account is not a right, you have none to it. You could argue breach of contract, but I'd advise you to read your contract again -- in all likelihood, it allows NetSol to terminate your account for any and all reasons, if they so choose.

- despite the fact that the law is very clear that doing so can open up statutory liability on their part.

Where ?

When a company perceives a power-imbalance they're likely to side with the one they perceive to be more powerful, regardless of what the law says or the truth of the claims involved.

Correct. Big bully with expensive lawyers > little guy with website. It is a different story if the little guy is a big website with scary lawyers, too. Slashdot, for instance.

I suppose the Internet needs a video site like Wikileaks serious about free speech enough not to cave into threats. Otherwise, not only are opposing voices stifled, but powerful interests like Scientology may be emboldened to go after and seek the removal of criticism in other forms of online media across the Internet.

Wake up.

Scientology has been trying to silence all their critics for decades, often by less than legal means.

We are their enemy. Therefore, any and all treatment of us is deemed acceptable.

IANAL but. Legally they did the right thing. They have to take it down if someone makes a copyright claim. However, if there is a counter claim then they can reinstate it since it has then become a problem for the courts.

If they did not take it down because they did not believe the content infringing then they are immediately claiming/agreeing to vet the content of posts to their site. I think they may also want to claim a bit of ignorance of the content on their site,

They also have to put the content back as soon as the uploader files a counter-claim.

Which makes it a far better law than not having it, in which case Youtube would have to take it down out of fear of being sued themselves, and wouldn't put it back up because they would be exposing themselves.

Some of the videos that were taken down were broadcasts of news stories.

One of the main targets for Scientology during the takedown was an expose done on the Australian news-magazine program Today Tonight a few months ago on Scientology's use of child labor. This was targeted because Anonymous' protest theme this month focuses on children, and the Today Tonight story was being prominently used in Anon promotional material for this protest.

In fact, it was this video that was taken down from my honeypot account that I used to file a DMCA counter-claim.

We think Disney is bad? Imagine if the bible were copyrighted. It'd run the eternal life of the author plus 75 years. But with a religion so blatantly a business like scientology, what will copyright be like _next_ century?

...American Rights Counsel LLC sent out over 4000 DMCA takedown notices to YouTube...

... leaving them with 250,000 more to send.

I say go to it. The only way these jokers can know which videos to hit with a DMCA is to watch them. Maybe if they're exposed to anti-CoS messages enough, it'll start to crack through the brainwashing, and they'll free themselves.

Yay! I was wondering when Scientology was going to wield a big wad of cash to make this go away.
Good for them, they are only proving the videos have information they do not want seen.
I just hope the Anonymous movement against the church of Scientology can use this to pick up some momentum.

Do the anti-Scientology posters to youtube have to reveal information about themselves to Scientology Inc. through their counter-notices? Isn't this just a way for Scientology to get the identities of the posters?

After we receive your counter-notification, we will forward it to the party who submitted the original claim of copyright infringement. Please note that when we forward the counter-notification, it includes your personal information. By submitting a counter-notification, you consent to having your information revealed in this way.

And yes, they do collect personal information and do exploit it to threaten and silence their critics. See, for example, the case of G. Allen. Allen was a regular guy who stopped by to look at the Anonymous protesters in February, with no real interest in the group, and then received a threatening letter from CoS because they ran his license plates and dug up his information to harass him.. and harass him they did. http://blackfish.biz/allen/?p=246 [blackfish.biz]

The fact that it was necessary to display "This is what scientologists actually believe" on the screen while parodying the cult of scientology on Southpark speaks volumes. This is the show that puts a nuke up Hillary Clinton's snatch and a hamster up Mr Slaves ass in front of a class of school kids.

Are scientologists required by their beliefs to silence all criticism no matter what the cost is? My respect for Hubbard will increase a lot if they are... adding a self destruct commandment to his cult in case it ever got out of control.

Are scientologists required by their beliefs to silence all criticism no matter what the cost is? My respect for Hubbard will increase a lot if they are... adding a self destruct commandment to his cult in case it ever got out of control.

Actually, yes, they are. I don't have the exact HCOPL at hand to quote from it, but Google the phrase "always attack, never defend".

There are numerous instances where Scientology has gone out of their way, at great expense, to silence critics. Just to cite one example, in 1991, Time Magazine published a cover story critical of Scientology. Not only did they sue Time for over ten million dollars (and lose), but in order to mitigate the damage, they published full-page ads in USA Today for a week (very expensive then as today).

They kept ex-Scientologist and critic Lawrence Wollersheim in court for over a decade after he won a suit against them for nine million dollars. The official line from Scientology, which was spread to their members, was "Not one thin dime for Wollersheim." All they did was get the judgment downgraded to two and a half million, and they eventually paid up.

Legal expenses? Their lawyers are probably scientologists and doing their work for free in exchange for moving up the ranks.

Most of Scientology's lawyers are Scientologists, but they aren't doing what they do for barter. They charge the Church, then use some of that money to pay for Scientology services. When they do Scientology services, that is. Kendrick Moxon, Scientology's chief attack dog, hasn't done any services in years, just like David Miscavige.

If you go to a group of Christians, and ask questions about their beliefs, they may engage you in a debate on Christian theology, they may give you a Bible to read, and so forth, but you can generally access these materials for free. If you go a group of Muslims and do the same thing, you will likely get the same results. Same goes for the Jewish religion, or Mormonism, or Hinduism.

If you go to a Scientology center and ask questions about their beliefs, what it will come down to is "Here are some classes you can take, they cost many thousands of dollars". Scientology is not willing to give away their beliefs just as every other major religion is willing to do so. Scientology is not willing to discuss their beliefs in an open and free environment, as the other major religions are willing to do. And Scientology hides many tenets of their beliefs behind copyright and trade secret laws.

That last one is the big one. You don't officially learn about their secret beliefs until you have paid many thousands of dollars and been sufficiently indoctrinated into the Church of Scientology.

Compare that to the other religions. To the best of my knowledge, there is no super-secret ultra-eyes-only version of the Bible that only the elite Christians get to read. There is no "not for the viewing of non-believers" version of the Qu'ran that only the most devout Muslims get to read. But there are secret Scientology documents which explain core beliefs of Scientology that the general rank and file of the CoS do not have access to.

And then, when people try to promulgate that information, it irks the CoS leadership. Because, for some reason, they don't want it spread that they believe that a galactic overlord named Xenu did all the wacky poor-scripted science-fictiony things he did many millions of years ago, here on Earth. (Excuse me, it was called Teegeeack then, according to these docs.) Because then people would go, "Wow, this reads like it was written by a hack science fiction author." (Which, you know, is what the guy who founded Scientology was.)

There's the fact that they have managed to get some state and national backing for their joke of a rehab scheme [wikipedia.org]. Which, by the way, they claim is the most successful rehab scheme on the planet (without providing figures or evidence), whereas in fact its techniques basically involve a lot of the same psychological breakdown and cod science as scientology itself. This is sick, IMHO.

They have an explicit doctrine of destroying critics through the legal system. They also believe that if a person is deemed "Suppressive" to the cause of Scientology, they have the right to lie, deceive, or even kill the person with impunity.

Try visiting whyaretheydead.net, it will tell about the people Scientology has killed.Try googling Operation Snow White, you'll find out about how Scientology infiltrated the IRS and shortly afterwards gained tax-exempt status.Try visiting Tory Magoo's website, she's an high ranking ex-Scientologist. Read about how she was denied her epilepsy medicine by Scientology.

Want to know what they've done to me personally? I'll give you a clue, us non-Scientologists give a damn about each other.

According to The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, ed. Brian Ash, Harmony Books, 1977: "... [Hubbard] began making statements to the effect that any writer who really wished to make money should stop writing and develop [a] religion, or devise a new psychiatric method. Harlan Ellison's version (Time Out, UK, No 332) is that Hubbard is reputed to have told John W. Campbell, 'I'm going to invent a religion that's going to make me a fortune. I'm tired of writing for a penny a word.' Sam Moskowitz, a chronicler of science fiction, has reported that he himself heard Hubbard make a similar statement, but there is no first-hand evidence." Hubbard himself was also quoted as driving his people toward financial results.

Here's a quote by the founder himself:

"Make money. Make more money. Make others produce so as to make money . . . However you get them in or why, just do it." and "Make sure that lots of bodies move through the shop,"

-L. Ron Hubbard

Aside from the above, if Scientology teaches purification of the body, why is Christie Alley so damn fat?

I haven't seen anything where this religion or cult or whatever you want to call it has done anything to hurt anyone.

Then you haven't learned much about the cult. Scientology has ruined lives and gotten people killed. For the latter, they dispense dangerous medical information (especially in psychiatry) that is entirely based on their beliefs. See the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org].

Yes, they have very silly beliefs, which is why it is so popular to make fun of them. But if that's all they were, then you wouldn't see these protests or all the news about it. Their beliefs alone (involving aliens, volcanoes, space ships, nuclear bombs and etc.) are harmless. It is what they do about their critics, whom they harass with both legal pressure and some not-so-legal tactics. See Fair Play [wikipedia.org].

There is a reason you see all those people in the protests wear masks, and that is because of policies like Fair Game. If they didn't wear masks, their lives and their families lives would be in danger, or at least risking serious harassment.

In fact, Slashdot has suffered the wrath of the cult of Scientology: Scientologists Force Comment Off Slashdot [slashdot.org]. Someone posted some of the cult's "scripture" in a comment, and Slashdot was forced to remove it on claims of copyright. There's one way that Scientology has negatively affected you. They already attacked an online community you participate in. They have also put legal pressure on search engines, including Google and Yahoo, to have results critical of Scientology removed.

Not sure what they actually expected to gain from doing this. They will likely be in legal trouble and now they have just made the anti-Scientology videos more popular than ever. What asshats.

I'll tell you why, but it'll be a little tl;dr:

1) Scientologists are required to attack any criticism of the Church, by holy writ of Hubbard.

2) The timing was critical. On September 3rd, a large, well-publicized anti-Scientology conference was held in Hamburg. A whole boatload of high-powered Scientologists were sent there to try to stop it, and failed. They tried to get into the conference, and failed. They knew that Anonymous was attending with their video cameras. They knew that these videos would be going up as quickly as possible. This was a preemptive strike to a) take down as many popular anti-Scientology YouTube channels as possible and b) create an atmosphere to make Anonymous members afraid to upload those videos.

2a) They did this once before recently. Actor Jason Beghe left the Church and was ready to speak out in full to popular critic Mark Bunker. A teaser of the interview was released on YouTube. A few days before the full interview was to be released, Bunker's YouTube account was taken down, and it took over a week, with a lot of effort by Bunker and the critic community (including Anonymous) to get it back up. That's when Anonymous discovered Vimeo.

2b) Speaking of Vimeo, the takedowns also affected some videos there too. They didn't limit themselves to YouTube, but they did concentrate their efforts there.